Interview with Michael Rohmeder, CEO of Equippo

Equippo is a Swiss company established in 2014 by Michael Rohmeder and Philipp Knobel, and founded on the belief that buying used heavy equipment on the global market should be simple.

Where does Equippo come from and what is it all about?

Equippo is a Swiss company established in 2014 by Michael Rohmeder and Philipp Knobel, and founded on the belief that buying used heavy equipment on the global market should be simple. The market was filled with dishonest players and black sheep who made it difficult and risky to buy used equipment internationally. The existing channels did not adequately meet the second-hand market needs. Large manufacturers have global dealer networks, but dealers are focused on their own brand and their own country.

The need for a new way of buying that was transparent, simple and safe - was imminent. 

Our mission is to make global equipment sales extremely easy. We aim to provide an excellent and personal customer experience and to create the most intuitive and user-friendly online equipment marketplace in the world.

Dealing with international clients, how important it is to give them a safe buying experience today? 

Buying a machine from abroad is a risky and complicated process even for experienced buyers; international clients face many different problems including: hidden malfunctions, customs and transportation regulations, language barriers, payment collection issues, different countries’ legal frameworks, to name a few. 

Giving these clients a safe experience is crucial and the main concern behind everything we do. That is why we made the experience of buying at Equippo Marketplace as safe and easy as it could possibly get. Buyers can check the real condition of a machine using our expert inspection report with detailed pictures and videos, then, with a couple of clicks, order it online with delivery included. Once they receive their machine they can test it at their jobsite and return it for a full refund in case they are not satisfied. 

It cannot get any safer than that, the only way to offer money-back guarantee with every machine is to be extremely confident and transparent with our service.

Equippo is working hard on the Customer Experience and you just integrated MachineryScanner’s Review System. How important is working on the online reputation for you today?

Trust is a key aspect in our industry. Imagine you want to buy a 50K EUR second-hand excavator for your business from a company you’ve never heard before, from a place you haven’t visited and to do it fully online - without physically seeing the machine. You will only invest this money if you’re 100% confident everything will go right.

Company reviews and ratings are a growing trend in many industries. People want to read about others’ experiences - good and bad ones - before making a buying decision. It is very important for our online reputation to have reliable, impartial and industry relevant software that can support us in getting those reviews from our clients. We have recently started using the MachineryScanner reviews software which is helping a great deal by making the process easy for clients and for us alike.

For now you cover the construction equipment industry. Do you plan to extend your system to other industries such as the truck or the ag sector? 

The Equippo marketplace mainly focuses on construction, access and handling equipment. However, from time to time, we sell trucks and agricultural machines via our other channels; it is definitely an attractive market which we would like to explore. The used construction equipment market moves at least 100 billion dollars every year so the possibilities are endless!

You have just launched the auction service. How does it work and what is your long term goal behind this move?

Yes indeed, this is part of Equippo’s strategy reformulation of last year which included the definition of 3 new channels to provide customers with excellent service whether they want to buy or sell equipment. One of these channels is Equippo Auction which answers directly to the need of our key accounts for a fast and effective way to sell large amounts of machines. 

The auction business model is pretty straightforward, you offer a machine and sell it live to the highest bidder, on the spot. As both a tech startup and a construction equipment company it is our job to bring the best of these two worlds and combine know-how and technology to positively disrupt the industry.

So far we have had 3 successful auctions with hundreds of lots sold to buyers in more than 20 countries. Equippo is now ready to go big and to achieve our long term goal to become the easiest and safest way to buy used equipment worldwide. 

Handy smartphone apps have been frequently used for business. Would you like to follow the trend and present your own app at some time?

As I said before we are a tech company so everything we do uses in-house developed technology; from our delivery price calculator to our detailed machine inspections every process we define is backed up by this. 

Smartphone apps are not an exception, we currently have a working application that we use for the supply side of our business. Machines listed at equippo.com are inspected using the Equippo App which allows us to enormously reduce the time to market of a machine. Our team is always working hard on improving this app and won’t take too long until our customers can use it to buy machines too.